ouzo

. ... .

He does not speak at the funeral.

It is a warm day and there is a brisk wind that whips around the small gathering, tugging robes and veils and hair and stinging tear-soaked cheeks and dry, blank eyes alike.

Sirius is one of the dry-eyed.

He does not speak at the funeral. Sirius stands in the back even though by all rights he should be in the front. He stands in the back, clean-shaven and whiskey-quiet, and does not say a word to Harry's friends - can't even stand to think their names.

They failed his godson. After the war, after Voldemort - when everyone was safe again and this wasn't supposed to be an option anymore, they failed his godson. Sirius doesn't blame them - there is no one to blame (which is hard) - but he can't look at them straight. Not at Harry's burial.

Not at Harry's burial.

Sirius stumbles away when the casket is lowered into the summer-dry dirt, and no one notices him go.

Harry Potter is dead.

. ... .

It is two ticks after twilight when he finds her. He isn't looking for her, but she is where Sirius would normally never go. Which is why he is there.

He doesn't want to speak to anyone, so he goes where they will never look: Grimmauld Place.

So he opens the door and walks with now-sober coordination to the kitchen. His steps are silent in the dust, and the ragged curtains of his mother's portrait don't fly open in a cacophony of madness and noise. The kitchen door creaks open at his touch, and there she is.

He can't stand to look at her or speak her name or even think her name, but the bright red hair is a brand to his vision. She is lolling in a chair with a half-empty bottle of firewhiskey on the beaten table beside her. She is still in her funeral robes. Her magnificent head swings his way drunkenly, and she may be smiling at him but he isn't sure because he can't fucking stand to look at her.

"Hello," she says. Her voice is hoarse, like maybe she has been screaming. Or maybe the firewhiskey has burned her throat. Sirius doesn't care.

He doesn't move or speak for a moment. And then he turns and leaves and lets the door fall shut behind him.

(Fiancees of dead godsons are creatures that men who have lost everyone they have ever loved cannot deal with.)

He stumbles up the stairs and wants to be drunk again. He shrugs off his robe, tugs off his shirt, falls on a random bed, and ignores the dust that plumes up around his body. His booted feet hang off of the mattress.

He sleeps and dreams of no one.

. ... .

Sirius sleeps for two days. He wakes up for a few seconds every now and then, but sleep is his friend. Sleep is good. There is no reason to be awake anyway.

There is no reason to be awake.

On the second day, though, he is unable to return to sleep. He accepts this without a fight and sits up stiffly.

An hour later, he forces himself to stand up and take a shower.

When he descends the stairs, a strange emotion ambushes him. This emotion is curiosity.

It takes him a moment to recognize it. And he thinks: Oh. When did Sirius Black stop being Sirius Black? ...When did Sirius Black start referring to himself in the third person?

The thought is so random and weird and seventh-year-at-Hogwarts-with-Prongs that he freezes in the foyer and bursts out laughing. Walburga's curtains fly open and his dear old mum begins screaming obscenities at him.

"Mudblood lover! Scum! How dare you darken the doorstep of my manor!"

He keeps laughing. Walburga stops screeching after thirty seconds of this. She stares at him.

He finally stops a full five minutes later and smiles at the portrait. She looks wary and almost frightened - and strangely sane. Sirius tries to think of the last time he saw any medium of his mother not throwing a fit in his presence and can barely remember such a time.

"What..." she begins tentatively. But what is there to say between them that hasn't already been said? A lot of things, and all of it is too late. They both know this. The words and possibilities have been smothered and rotting and refused for too long now, and suffocation is the Black tradition. So she closes her mouth and sniffs and lets the words that might have been said lie in their grave. "What are you laughing at, you traitorous disappointment?"

He accepts her words without rage and continues to smile at her pleasantly. It has been a long time since his Hogwarts days and even longer since he last smiled at Walburga in anything except the spirit of defiance and derision, but he feels in himself a ghost of his old roguish charm. "Lily once told me never to trust a man who speaks in third-person."

Walburga is confused and falls back on hatred. "What - get out of my house! And take your blood-traitor whore with you!" she shrieks.

And there is that curiosity again. He turns his back on Walburga mid-invective and walks to the kitchen. He ignores the still-ranting painting with detached, unfamiliar ease and presses his hand on the door before hesitating. He looks at the battered surface for several moments.

The curiosity dies. The strange levity deflates. He is suddenly empty and - empty. He lets his hand fall from the worn door and walks away.

At his third step, he hears the sound of a bottle breaking.

And then silence.

Grimmauld Place is a house of the dead.

. ... .

When he wakes up again, she is in bed with him.

She is naked.

Her new-parchment pale skin is dotted liberally with freckles - even the curve of her right breast (that he has a strange urge to lick, but does not). Sirius turns his gaze to the ceiling -

And then he gives up and closes his eyes again. Sleep comes quickly.

. ... .

She is still asleep when he next surfaces. He listens to the steady, soft sound of her breathing for only a moment before squeezing his eyes shut and picturing her pale, freckled skin slashed open and even paler with death - pictures stabbing her graceful throat and watching her wheeze away the last of her life.

There is a terrible heat in his blood and a tingling restlessness in the muscles of his hands and wrists. He rolls out of bed and grabs his shirt in one surprisingly (for the lethargy and suffocation he has quickly become accustomed to) smooth movement. He steps over a set of robes that aren't his as he strides out of the dust-choked room.

He doesn't take the time to shower before letting the heavy old door of his blood creak shut behind him.

The sun is brassy on his tongue and bright on his eyes.

(Why is the weather suddenly and consistently beautiful? This is London. Sirius wants his fucking rainstorms back.)

He disappears with a crack.

. ... .

This is a bar. It's small and quiet and there is low, sad music coming from a strange machine wedged in the corner. Sirius doesn't understand the crooning words. In fact, he doesn't understand the bartender.

He thinks the what locals might be speaking is Greek but isn't sure and doesn't care. He has managed to communicate just fine so far. He throws back another of those mysterious shots and stares at the empty shot glass.

The bartender refills it without a word.

This is a bar. This is Sirius. This is Sirius at a bar. This is Sirius at a bar and not shagging or killing that fucking failure of a human being.

This is the best it's going to get.

He takes another shot.

. ... .

He wakes up on a really gross cot in a tiny room that smells faintly of bean soup. He slowly gets to his feet and immediately pukes in a corner.

When he is finished, he stumbles out of the room -

And into the bar. The bartender glances his way, unreadable, and jerks his head at Sirius. Sirius staggers to his stool.

His shot glass is still in front of it.

The bartender refills it without a word.

. ... .

The next time he wakes up on the cot, it starts off the same. He stands. He pukes. He stumbles out of the room -

The divergence: the place is empty. The bartender is gone. The strange machine isn't singing songs Sirius can't comprehend. There are no tired-looking locals drinking quietly and steadily in the corners.

But there is a single shot sitting on the counter, and all Sirius can think about is how there is still enough alcohol in his blood stream and affecting his brain that he would feel entirely drunk again with just that one drink.

He throws it back.

And then he clumsily pulls a small sack of gold out of a grubby letter in his back pocket, plunks it on the bar, and disappears.

. ... .

When he pushes open the door to Grimmauld Place, he is pleasantly drunk. He does not know how long he has been gone. On top of that, he does not know how long it has been since he ate something.

He thinks maybe it has been a few days. Or more. Maybe a week. He is suddenly and violently hungry. He sways his way to the kitchen and does not hesitate in opening the door.

She is sitting there again. He walks past her, straight to the cupboards, and stares at empty, dusty shelves.

"What are you looking for?"

He does not turn. He keeps staring at the shelves and hoping something edible will suddenly appear.

And then he does turn around - he turns and walks out of the kitchen that smells like whiskey, out of the house that smells like dust -

And sets out to search for food.

. ... .

He ends up finding what looks to be a likely-looking restaurant. He catches a glimpse of himself in the window before he reaches the door, though, and walks past it with deliberation. The alcohol is wearing off, and he knows he can't go in looking like he does. He turns down the alley next to the restaurant and wonders while he fingers his wand and mutters a cleaning spell exactly how long he spent on that bender in possibly-Greece.

There is no easy answer to that, unless he wants to ask the woman still in his house, and so he quickly dismisses it.

It is three or so in the afternoon judging by the sun, and there is no one in the restaurant except bored waiting staff and two women about his age. He eats with forced slowness and orders several meals to go.

The food is all meant for him. Sirius doesn't give a shit if she starves to death.

He apparates home (when the fuck did he start thinking of Grimmauld Place as home?) after lingering over the meal for almost two hours and immediately sleeps.

. ... .

When he wakes up again, she is in bed with him.

She is naked.

Her new-parchment pale skin is dotted liberally with freckles - even the curve of her right breast (that he has a strange urge to lick, but does not). Sirius turns his gaze to the ceiling -

And then he gives up and nudges her awake.

Here is betrayal smiling quietly with every slow, rolling thrust and helpless moan. Here is betrayal and here is Sirius and here is the woman he cannot look in the face as he slips in and out.

Ginny isn't really Ginny. She could be anyone. She could be Lily (Gryffindor-red hair fanning out around a pale face), and that is a doubled betrayal in every sense of the word.

Here is Sirius knowing he has failed Harry and James -

Here is Sirius reveling desperately in his complete failure as a human being by rubbing it in and going too far - but he is rubbing it in no ones face but his own and going too far out of comfortable habit.

It used to be acceptable. His friends would laugh and watch the chaos, kings of the rodeo, but the years have all disappeared on him and taken his brothers with them. His life has passed before his eyes in madness and despair and misery and prisonhatredvengeance and betrayal - look, there's that word again -

(He thinks he would like some peace.)

Here is Sirius fucking his dead godson's fiancee.

Here is Sirius betraying himself.

(He doesn't know or care what is in it for her.)

A/N: So this was written for AlinaLotus on her request. Sirius/Ginny, ladies and gents. I can see it continuing or remaining a oneshot, but I've got a ton of other requests to write in the short window of time before I return to college and I don't know if it's worth the trouble. Anyway: Alina, I hope you liked it.